The choppers were low. Not that we could really see them, but you could tell by the way their "blat blat blat" sound smacked you in the ears that they weren't flying news. We gathered in the open so as to not attract their attention. A couple of last-minute arrivals swelled our ranks beyond the "count 'em on one hand" stage, and we managed to get out of the Meetup by 8:15pm.

A ruddy bunch of mugs this one is, I thought as we were sneaking through the MBCT over to Spring. Taking the Green Lane to 6th to Hill Street, the pack was starting to howl a bit, and they were all barking at the sky. Great thinking that was, starting the mission by chasing some black-ops choppers across downtown.

A few blocks down Hill we found it. Another effin' LA movie shoot of course, but it was boring so we didn't hang long. From there we slid on down to 11th, and took a little turn around the Church of Money. There was something going on that had the LAPD crawling all over the place, so we took a loop around to avoid the crowd, and after dragging a few skaters away from the "Win a Toyota" booth, we made our way over to 12th St. and crossed under the 110 Freeway.

We turned a block south to Pico and went a few blocks west to the first stop, the triangular park in Alvarado Terrace. At one end of the park is the shortest street in Los Angeles, Powers Place, which is actually wider than it is long. At the other end of the Terrace is the First Church of Christ, Scientist, which although it now houses some Seventh Day Adventists, is probably more famous as the former home of Jim Jones' People's Temple from 1970 until 1978 when they moved to Guyana. Those are the folks that offed themselves with a mix of grape Flavor-Aid and cyanide, gaving us two notable factoids:

The murder and mass-suicide of 918 people was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until 9/11/2001

Their lemming-like application for a group Darwin Award also gave birth to the inaccurately-coined phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid"

After enjoying the views briefly we headed south, crossed Venice to Bonnie Brae to Washington to Union to 22nd. A few blocks down we found the yet another of LA's famous Closed Pedestrian Facilities @ Orchard. That didn't work out, so we sidewalked it up to Washington, pass Angelus Roseday Cemetery, then crossed over to Venice and started cutting into the old Arlington Heights neighborhood. We rolled west on Pico for a before cutting over to Country Club, then we took Wilton up to 9th. We took it most of the way back downtown save a quick jaunt over to 7th for a few blocks, and then we took a loop around Hope and Peace park before going back to 7th and riding it down into downtown.

A couple of more turns took us back to the parking lot, and we called it a night. Then we went home, 'cause that's where we live.